This isn't heaven. It's Wisconsin.

"Mom," Karen Tipps's 12-year-old son Simon said on a Wednesday afternoon late last year, "our quiet little home isn't gonna be so quiet anymore."

The Tippses' home sits on the grounds of the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help outside Champion, Wisconsin. A winding trip down rural roads leads to the shrine's chapel, the stations of the cross, a grotto, and a crypt where a collection of crutches is amassed—alleged evidence of miracles performed. Upstairs there's a gift shop that sells Catholic paraphernalia: crosses and trinkets, DVD dramatizations of the lives of saints, T-shirts.

Karen Tipps and her husband are the shrine's caretakers—a task that became far more intense after it received a rare designation. On December 8, the Catholic church affirmed the shrine as one of about a dozen sites worldwide—and the first in the U.S.—to have received a visit from the Virgin Mary.

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